Stay on target

This week’s episode of The Flash felt more like My Little Speedster: Friendship is Magic at times, but it ended with a decent surprise. We pick up right after the end of last week’s episode, with The Flash being held against the ceiling by Savitar, the god of speed. To everyone but The Flash, Savitar is invisible. The Flash tells Joe to shoot it. He shoots in the general area underneath Barry, and the bullets seem to bounce off air. Savitar takes The Flash for a run, leaving Joe to fight off Alchemy’s followers. As he does, Alchemy escapes with his jewel.

Savitar runs so fast, he and The Flash disappear and reappear at different points around the city. They end up at the waterfront. Savitar is beating Barry badly, and Iris asks Cisco and Caitlin to open a portal to the waterfront and use their powers to help Barry out. Cisco, as Vibe, opens the portal and Caitlin uses her ice powers to freeze Savitar. It works only for a second, but the ambush is enough to scare Savitar away.

Back at S.T.A.R. Labs, Caitlin recommends that Cisco not try another portal, as it’s dangerous for his brain. She tells him he’ll be OK and as she walks away, her eyes flash white. They try to study the cocoon Wally’s trapped in and Caitlin reasons that it’s too dangerous to get him out because his body might be breaking down and rebuilding, like a caterpillar’s. Joe doesn’t want to hear anymore and goes to the police station to interrogate one of Alchemy’s followers.

He’s interrupted by Caitlin, who tells him that Wally has come out of the cocoon. She’s not a great liar, but Joe believes her anyway. When he’s gone, she steps into the interrogation room, freezes the security camera, and demands to know where Alchemy is. The follower taunts her for being scared and she freezes him. When two policemen knock on the door and ask who’s in there, she freezes the room to make a fog, escapes unseen and freezes the lock, trapping them inside. When Julian sees her, she grabs him and takes him with her.

She takes Julian to a frozen food warehouse and makes him use his computer skills to find Alchemy for her by way of Savitar. He finds that two people have recently searched for the name, Savitar and they’re both in Central City. When she’s distracted, Julian sends his location to the police. Meanwhile, Team Flash has also figured out where they are and The Flash arrives to find out what Caitlin is doing. When Julian keeps interrupting the conversation, The Flash knocks him out. She says she wants to find Alchemy and ask him to take away her powers. Barry asks him to let him help her, and she brings up all the people he’s failed to help. She even tells Cisco that Barry creating Flashpoint is what killed his brother. They’re interrupted by the police, who see Julian on the ground and fire at the two metahumans. Barry gets Caitlin to safety, but she stabs him in the calf with an icicle and leaves him.

Barry gets himself back to S.T.A.R. Labs to heal, and he comes clean about Cisco’s brother. Cisco is angry, but says they need to focus on finding Caitlin. Joe, H.R. and Cisco head out to watch the two addresses Caitlin had Julian look up. She shows up at the house Cisco’s watching. The follower reveals that Alchemy is just following Savitar and that he has the ability to take powers away. Cisco calls her outside and asks her to let him help. She fires icicles at him and The Flash appears to save him. She freezes the ground, causing The Flash to slip. As she taunts him, he kicks her legs out from under her. She says that was cold (yay, ice puns!) and kisses him, turning his face blue. Vibe blasts her off Barry and tells him to vibrate to warm himself up.

They lock her up in a cell at S.T.A.R. Labs, and she says that Barry doesn’t care about fixing anyone else’s problems now that he has Iris. As Iris consoles, Barry, telling him he can’t guarantee that Caitlin wouldn’t have become Killer Frost or that Cisco’s brother wouldn’t have died in the original timeline. They’re interrupted by a power surge and find Joe cutting Wally out of his cocoon. As they do, it explodes and Wally stands there, confused for a second before speeding away.

The team reasons that they need Caitlin to figure out what to do. Barry lets her out of the cell, telling her she’s free to go if she kills him. She brings an icicle to his chest, but can’t do it. Barry says he knows that Caitlin is still there under all that cold. That’s enough to snap her out of being Killer Frost and she figures out that cutting Wally out early left him in a fugue states. Joe reasons that he would go to the house he grew up in and Caitlin gives Barry a serum to bring Wally out of his Daze. Once they get Wally back to the lab, he’s excited to finally be a speedster and Caitlin is happy to be running tests, working as a doctor again.

Barry and Joe receive word that Julian has woken up in the hospital and Barry runs down to convince Julian not to turn Caitlin in. Julian goes all Malfoy for a second with his prejudices about metahumans, but agrees to pretend he doesn’t remember what happened. One one condition: Barry has to quit being a CSI. Barry agrees and Julian holds up his end of the bargain. As the episode ends, Julian hears a voice calling out to him. He’s met by Savitar, who asks him to become his acolyte again. Julian opens his drawer to grab a familiar-looking costume. Julian is Doctor Alchemy.

Julian (Tom Felton) has a secret. (Photo: Screenshot via CW)

If your favorite part of The Flash was how optimistic and positive it is, this was the episode for you. Barry’s belief in his friends is what ultimately saved the day here. As sappy as it was, this is the kind of thing that separates The Flash from the CW’s other superhero shows. It’s lighter and more hopeful than the grim Arrow, and more earnest than the self-aware pulp of Legends of Tomorrow. That said, the Killer Frost story was resolved much too fast here. It makes sense that they would have to wrap it up in time for next week’s crossover event, but it was an anticlimactic end to something they’ve been building towards for the last few weeks.

The twist at the end was certainly unexpected and explains a lot about Julian’s character. His distrust of metahumans makes sense since he’s the one making them go bad in the first place. We also see that he is more of a reluctant servant to Savitar. Learning more about that should be interesting, but we may have to wait a while. Aliens are invading next week, and every CW superhero show will drop what they’re doing to deal with it.